The Science of Walking
Investigations into Locomotion in the Long Nineteenth Century
Translated by Tilman Skowroneck and Robin Blanton
232 pages
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50 halftones
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6 x 9
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© 2020
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction: A Recalcitrant Object
1 Walkers, Wayfarers, Soldiers: Sketching a Practical Science of Locomotion
2 Observers of Locomotion: Theories of Walking in the French Science de l’homme
3 Mechanicians of the Human Walking Apparatus: The Beginnings of an Experimental Physiology of the Gait
4 The Rise of Graphical and Photographic Methods: Locomotion Studies and the Predicament of Representation
Conclusion: The Centipede’s Dilemma
1 Walkers, Wayfarers, Soldiers: Sketching a Practical Science of Locomotion
2 Observers of Locomotion: Theories of Walking in the French Science de l’homme
3 Mechanicians of the Human Walking Apparatus: The Beginnings of an Experimental Physiology of the Gait
4 The Rise of Graphical and Photographic Methods: Locomotion Studies and the Predicament of Representation
Conclusion: The Centipede’s Dilemma
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Review Quotes
New Scientist
"The Science of Walking is all about how there is more to taking a stroll than meets the eye. Physiology, neurology, anthropology and psychiatry all feature in Andreas Mayer’s fascinating account of an everyday activity."
Centaurus
"An interesting and finely researched book. . . . Mayer has selected a number of central themes and researched them in depth, rather than dwelling on the sheer breadth of interests that historical research on walking might address. . . . This translation, extended by the author, is highly readable andextensively illustrated—itself a statement about the manner in which researchers hoped to pin down the fleeting realities of movement as objective knowledge. It makes available and attractive a large amount of research on a largely unknown literature in French and German. . . . The book is a fluent and authoritative study, opening new questions and new resources, certainly not just for a narrowly understood history of biomechanics or of inscription instruments, but for a history of the human sciences with all the breadth that implies."
Social History of Medicine
"In recent years, historians of science have made fruitful use of an analytical perspective focused on the definition of natural phenomena as 'objects' of science. Andreas Mayer turns this process of objectification on its head. . . . His mastery of the disparate language, methods and theories surrounding his 'recalcitrant object' is evident on every page. The insights offered in this thoughtful and elegant study will challenge historians across a broad range of fields."
Choice
"This is an unusual book, a true history of science that draws heavily on literature and the arts to explicate the science. Given that during the 18th century, scientists were as much philosophers and writers as researchers, this approach seems appropriate. The clear and witty style makes the text enjoyable for its qualities as much as for what it says. . . . This interesting view of cross-disciplinary scientific development would not be out of place in any history of science collection. . . . Recommended."
Lorraine Daston, director emerita, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
"What could be more natural, more intuitive than walking? Yet as Mayer shows in this erudite and perceptive study, everyone from physiologists to physicists, drillmasters to dancemasters, novelists to physiognomists tried to plumb the secrets of human locomotion in the long nineteenth century. Deeply researched and beautifully illustrated, this book draws together philosophy, science, literature, and medicine into the fascinating story of a science that sought the essence of the human and the truths of character in how we put one foot in front of another."
Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge
"Mayer asks how the apparently mundane and commonplace activity of walking ever became the subject of a science. His fascinating and illuminating answers, presented in this superbly crafted book, reveal very much more. Mayer gives a compelling account of how experiment and observation interacted across a range of social and medical sciences through the nineteenth century. Along the way, he offers important commentary on the very status of the empirical sciences and the emergence of modern disciplines such as field anthropology and experimental physiology, and he illustrates his account with graphics and cleverly chosen case studies. The work will help change received stories of how modern life became the target and the challenge for the scientific gaze."
James Chandler, author of An Archaeology of Sympathy: The Sentimental Mode in Literature and Cinema
"With the emergence of the human sciences in the late Enlightenment comes a new scientific interest in that most human of things, the upright gait, which Balzac famously called ‘the physiognomy of the body.’ For nearly a century and a half, from Rousseau and Wordsworth to Freud and Marcel Mauss, this subject would remain a preoccupation across many intellectual environments in at least three languages. Mayer, a guide singularly equipped to conduct an exploration of this complex terrain, leads us on a walking tour that is by turns march and ramble, hike and promenade. The result is a deft and original study, with implications spelled out for promising paths of inquiry well beyond its own beautifully executed itinerary."
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